The MARA Act would open our oceans to the harms of factory farming

The potential pitfalls of offshore fish farming

For now, fish farms exist almost exclusively in state-administered waters within 3 miles of shore. Not all aquaculture is created equal, and some kinds — like farms for oysters, mussels, clams and sea vegetables — can actually benefit water quality when they’re scaled correctly and run well. But farming fish is a different story.

Finfish aquaculture essentially replicates the worst ideas of land-based factory farming and moves them to the ocean, where it’s even harder to control what happens to waste products, and where fish have lots of potential interactions with the wider environment. Fish wastes already accumulate under aquaculture pens, altering the delicate ecosystem of the seafloor. Along with fertilizer runoff, fish-farm waste adds nutrients to the water that contribute to algal blooms, massive increases in algae that starve water of oxygen and sometimes spike toxins that make water unsafe for people and wildlife. Diseases and pests that thrive in the densely populated fish cages can infect other species in the surrounding environment, and fish can escape due to maintenance problems or damage to pens sustained during harsh weather. Those escapees compete with other fish for resources, potentially edging out native species or even interbreeding with them if the farmed fish have wild relatives in the area. Those resulting offspring could potentially harm the long-term viability of wild populations by introducing unfavorable genes.

Proponents of offshore aquaculture argue that these problems are made much worse by regulations that keep farms in sensitive, shallow nearshore environments, and that facilities in open waters could potentially solve many of those problems. Open-ocean environments are sparsely populated compared to those close to shore, minimizing interactions with wildlife; the facilities would also be better protected from weather and waves in deeper waters while being farther from the seabed, thereby reducing waste buildup.

But that last claim in particular exposes the concerning approach these facilities take toward the ocean. Diluting the pollutants from aquaculture in more water isn’t the same as reducing them outright, and given that moving offshore could enable fish farms to expand dramatically in scale, it’s naive to assume that local impacts would remain insignificant, especially in areas where water quality is already impaired.

Regardless of whether siting farms farther offshore exacerbates pollution and disease, it still has to contend with one of the most fundamental problems of raising animals for meat: the inefficiency of feed. Growing feed for land-based animals is what drives farmers to plant so much conventional — and environmentally destructive — corn and soy. As aquaculture companies move toward more soy based-feeds, the industry’s contribution to those problems — including the death of marine species thanks to fertilizer-heavy runoff from rivers — will only increase. At the same time, the aquaculture industry remains reliant on fish meal and fish oil that are extracted from huge numbers of small, wild-caught fish. Their removal for processing into aquaculture feeds is destructive to both marine ecosystems and coastal communities around the world, especially in the Global South. Expanding finfish aquaculture can only worsen these harms.

The MARA Act: A giveaway to big aquaculture

So far, the development of offshore aquaculture has faced some big regulatory hurdles. While states have authority over nearshore waters, the regulation of offshore farms isn’t streamlined into a standardized process. Currently, several different federal bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Army Corps of Engineers all claim jurisdiction, creating a complicated permitting process that has stalled many proposed projects.

The MARA Act would standardize that process and designate NOAA as the coordinating office for permitting, removing the longstanding roadblock. But most of the bill focuses on research, directing NOAA to permit and fund demonstration projects where offshore aquaculture can be studied, and giving them enough power over that process to largely override the objections of Indigenous tribes, fishing communities and others who might stand in the way.